Schiller on Meeting Marilyn Monroe for the first time: "Here I am a 23-year-old kid out of college becoming a photojournalist and I was scared shitless...I had seen her on the cover of Time Magazine when I was in college. I had already photographed some celebrities for Life Magazine, but I ‘d never photographed somebody who had been photographed by every photographer in the world. By the time I was introduced to her in 1960, she had been photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Milton Greene, Philippe Halsman, Richard Avedon, you just name it..."

“Oh you’ll never get a good picture from that angle. Go over there where the light will be better and I’ll show you what a good picture is.” Then she turns and that’s that...

On his iconic photograph of Marilyn on the cover of his new book, Marilyn & Me: "I think there are probably some unedited Marilyn somewhere. In the new book, there are at least thirty images that came from the shooting for Look Magazine. I’m not exaggerating, until last year I had never looked at that shooting since the day the film was sent into Look Magazine and Marilyn approved the contact sheets...Now I look at it and I come up with this image, the first picture I ever shot of her. This picture was never published; it’s on the cover of the Talese book. It comes from a contact sheet she killed all except the one frame. She said to me as I’m shooting, “Oh you’ll never get a good picture from that angle. Go over there where the light will be better and I’ll show you what a good picture is." Then she turns and that’s that..."–La Lettre de la Photographie link to Interview

8 comments:

Fantastic interview-the kind of stuff that readers what to know about what happened behind the camera, before the photo hit the media. Fascinating era, and I think Mr. Schiller still has much more in store..

To All photographers: In this great, beautifully-written interview Schiller states 3 times that "I own the copyright" - and he also discusses the importance of photography being a business. Can't argue with success!!

Fantastic interview - the kind of stuff that readers what to know about what happened behind the camera, before the photo hit the media. Fascinating era, and I think Mr. Schiller still has much more ...

Elizabeth, I just had to congratulate you on the Lawrence Schiller interview - chock full of amazing stories and revelations. Your questions were wonderful and the resulting interview illuminates an era of photographic history for us.Thank you!Margaret McCarthywww.margaretmccarthy.com

I liked the interview very much, Liz. I grew up with Life and Look so I'm certain I would know Schiller's work if I saw it. I think I remember his piece on Marilyn as well, if it's the one I'm thinking of, and he was very wet behind the ears indeed. I'll definitely be looking at more of his work but I still stand by my previous statement about MM.